Rashad al-Shawa, 79, Ex-Palestinian Mayor

Reuters

Published: September 28, 1988

GAZA, Sept. 27—
Rashad al-Shawa, a Palestinian Mayor of Gaza for 11 years until he was deposed by Israel in 1982, died today at home of a heart attack, his family said. He was 79 years old.

Mr. Shawa, a member of Jordanian King Hussein's Hashemite clan, was involved in Arab politics for 40 years.

Israelis and Palestinians regarded him as the senior pro-Jordanian ''father figure'' in the Gaza Strip, which is home to 650,000 Palestinians under Israeli occupation. But his role was diminished in the occupied territories by Jordan's loss of popular support to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Mr. Shawa, who was appointed Mayor by Israel in 1971, was deposed in 1982 for failing to cooperate with Israeli rule. His local influence remained strong largely because of his chairmanship of the Gaza Benevolent Society, which dispensed Jordanian funds.

Last month, he said that the Palestinian uprising in the territories would continue because of Palestinian despair. ''People here have reached a point where they don't see much difference between life and death under the insulting and degrading conditions of military occupation,'' he said.

In recent years, he was frequently mentioned by people involved in peace efforts as a moderate Palestinian leader with whom Israel might agree to negotiate. In 1987, Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said Mr. Shawa was ''the most important leader in Gaza'' and suggested that he would be acceptable as a member of a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation that would negotiate with Israel on the future of the occupied territories.